thinkbroadband

The speed test results for May 2015 are out and so it is time to see if your
own speed test is above or below average for your provider.

Looking at the national picture quickly, England recorded an average (mean)
download speed of 26 Mbps and 5.8 Mbps Upload, Northern Ireland 22.4 Mbps and
4.5 Mbps, Scotland 23.4 Mbps and 5 Mbps and Wales 21.3 Mbps and 4.4 Mbps.
London is the fastest English region with an average download of 31.3 Mbps and
the East of England is the slowest at 21.3 Mbps.

Large Provider Fibre Based Connection Speed Tests May 2015

Provider

Median Download

Mean Download

Median Upload

Mean Upload

FTTC Overall (excludes Virgin Media)

31.6 Mbps

32.9 Mbps

8.5 Mbps

9.4 Mbps

BT

33.7 Mbps

35 Mbps

8.8 Mbps

9.6 Mbps

Plusnet

37.3 Mbps

39 Mbps

13.6 Mbps

12.2 Mbps

Sky

26.9 Mbps

26.6 Mbps

8.2 Mbps

7.7 Mbps

TalkTalk

31.2 Mbps

31.1 Mbps

1.8 Mbps

5.1 Mbps

Virgin Media

44.8 Mbps

52.9 Mbps

5.6 Mbps

6.1 Mbps

Oddly there has been a drop in the speeds of the fibre based services, but
PlusNet has bucked the trend and show a small increase. It will be interesting
to see if this is just a small monthly blip or whether the trend continues. We
ran out of time for this batch of results, but when we publish the June results
we should be able to talk about peak versus off-peak speeds and look at the
historical trends too.

ADSL/ADSL2+ Connection Speed Tests May 2015

Provider

Median Download

Mean Download

Median Upload

Mean Upload

All Providers

5.4 Mbps

6.4 Mbps

0.6 Mbps

0.6 Mbps

BT

4.5 Mbps

5.8 Mbps

0.4 Mbps

0.5 Mbps

Plusnet

5.8 Mbps

6.7 Mbps

0.5 Mbps

0.5 Mbps

Sky

5.6 Mbps

6.8 Mbps

0.7 Mbps

0.7 Mbps

TalkTalk

5.9 Mbps

6.7 Mbps

0.6 Mbps

0.6 Mbps

BT and Sky users appear to be a bit slower, but PlusNet and TalkTalk
customers are maybe getting a better deal. Of course the result for individuals
will vary greatly with the largest factor being the distance to the telephone
exchange, but knowing if you are above average or not is useful. The long term
trend for ADSL and ADSL2+ speeds is for them to still be rising, this is
helping by the continued roll-out of ADSL2+ by BT Wholesale and while the LLU
providers are not expanding so rapidly now, there are plenty still switching to
their ADSL2+ services to escape the old up to 8 Mbps BT Wholesale IPStream Max
system. The headlines often look at just the fibre speeds, but the majority are
still on older exchange based services for now.

XILO has crept into the top 15 speed table this month, by virtue of a better
sample size, pushing Daisy down into 16th and KC into 17th place. KC is an
unusual one, as while their median (7.6 Mbps) speed is very low the mean speed
at 26.1 Mbps and top 10% at 80.4 Mbps shows the problem of a FTTP heavy
roll-out, i.e. while those who have access to Lightstream get great speeds the
slow speed of the roll-out is hurting others. Wessex Internet has dropped out
of the chart because the sample size was too small for May.

One of the satellite providers was at the bottom of the table with a median
of 2.8 Mbps (mean 4 Mbps) for downloads (0.3 Mbps median upload and 0.7 Mbps
mean) with the fastest 10% getting speeds of 10.4 Mbps or faster, which does
not bode well for any Government ambitions to make wider use of satellite based
connections to satisfy the 2 Mbps Universal Service Commitment.

Comments

Posted by
Hubz about 1 year ago
Is that the mean speed of the top 10% ?

Posted by
mike41 about 1 year ago
Independent tests such as TBB's based on everyday user experience are so useful when we come to choose a new or replacement ISP. Thank you.

Posted by
jrawle about 1 year ago
Aren't the FTTC speeds pretty meaningless, as they don't distinguish between customers on an "up to 38" and "up to 76" package? The averages for a particular provider will depend on the proportion of customers on each product more than the performance of those products. PlusNet shows higher upload speeds because their 38 package includes the full "up to 19.5 Mbps" upload, whereas BT's is limited to 9.5.

Posted by
postie90 about 1 year ago
I agree wholeheartedly re the KC slow rollout of lightstream. our area is not even mentioned in the rollout, but that said our choices of moving is limited to 1 or 2 others literally.